Sunday, February 3, 2013

Of Lions & Monkeys!

It seems that reports claiming that Asma Al-Assad was pregnant
and that her husband was sent into outer space by his allies, the Iranians,
were utterly false. Assad, we are now assured, is no longer virile or space-worthy.
Months of bloodshed have taken their toll. These shocking revelations seem to lend
credence to reports of Assad’s impending extinction followed by an inevitable descent
into the lower depths of Hell.

Saturday February
2, 2013

Today’s
Death Toll:120 martyrs,
including 10 children, 8 women. 2 were martyred after being tortured. 58 martyrs
were reported in Damascus and Damascus Suburbs, 25 in Aleppo, 11 in Idlib, 7 in
Daraa, 6 in Homs, 5 in Hama, 4 in Deir Ezzor, 2 in Lattakia, and 1 in Banyas (LCCs).

Points
of Random Shelling:268 points: 18 were
hit by air strikes, 3 by cluster bombs, 2 by barrel bombs, 1 by thermobaric
bombs, 111 by mortars, 87 by artillery, and 46 by rocket missiles (LCCs).

Clashes:88 points. Successful operations included the downing of a
MiG in Abu Dohour airport, taking control of the road connecting Heesh and
Babuleen and securing the defection of several soldiers from Wadi Daif in Idlib
Province. Several regime headquarters in Deir Ezzor City and Raqqa were liberated.
In Adra, Damascus Suburbs, the liberation of the Chemical Unit, left 48 loyalist
soldiers dead (LCCs).

News

Syrian
Rebels Advance Near Aleppo AirportThe capturing of the Sheik Said
neighborhood, southeast of Aleppo, is a significant blow to regime forces
because the area includes a major road, linking the northern city with the
airport. The army has used the road to supply troops.

Syria
Opposition Leader Meets with Russian FMThe meeting Saturday between
Lavrov and Moaz al-Khatib did not include U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and
U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, despite initial suggestions that all four might
meet in southern Germany. Biden instead held separate meetings with Lavrov,
Brahimi, and al-Khatib. US Vice President Joe Biden, right, and Sheikh Moaz
al-Khatib, Syria's top opposition leader, shake hands at the Security
Conference in Munich, Germany, February 2, 2013. ​​This
year's Munich Security Conference is designed to revive efforts to find a means
to end the civil war in Syria. Earlier this week, al-Khatib said he is willing
to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government. Syrian
opposition talks with Russia and Iran After a 45-minute meeting with
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, Alkhatib told Reuters: "We
agreed we have to find a solution to end the suffering of the Syrian
people." He also met separately with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and
U.N. special envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi. Alkhatib's purpose in his
meetings was "to discuss finding a way to remove the regime with the least
possible bloodshed and loss of life," he said.

Syria
Sugar Consumption Falls 40% as War Shuts Down Sweet ShopsSyria’s sugar
consumption fell by as much as 40 percent over the past 12 months as the civil
war shut down its confectionery shops, T. Akhras Group Chairman Tarif Akhras
said today. Demand for sugar in the Middle Eastern nation fell to 450,000 metric
tons to 500,000 tons a year, from 700,000 tons to 750,000 tons a year earlier,
Akhras said today in an interview at the Kingsman sugar conference in Dubai.
Akhras’s company is based in Homs, Syria.

The uprising to unseat President
Bashar al-Assad is now almost two years old. While Western governments have
long worried that its self-declared leaders, many of whom operate from Turkey,
cannot jell into a coherent movement with unifying leaders, the fighting across
the country has been producing a crop of field commanders who stand to assume
just these roles. These men — with inside connections, street credibility and
revolutionary narratives that many of the Western-recognized leadership lacks —
have taken the reins of the war. They hold the weapons. They have their own
international relations and financing. Should they survive, many of them could
become Syria’s postwar power brokers.

… the big question is how to deal with
all these mounting crises as at least part of the post-Ottoman state system in
the Levant comes crashing down, without getting deeply involved in ways that
can only hurt Israel. We know that Netanyahu has opened a channel of coordination
with Jordan in this regard; now is the time to do whatever is necessary to make
amends with Turkey, too. And it might be wise to keep Barak at the Defense
Ministry.

The Islamization of the Syrian
opposition is giving the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its local affiliate,
the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a new source of strength and local support.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in the Syrian National Council (SNC) and
Al-Nusra’s willingness to militarily target the PKK/PYD has helped reinforce
the radical Kurdish nationalist group’s image as a defender of a secular Syrian
state and Kurdish rights. This trend is occurring as moderate opposition groups
fail to coalesce into a viable alternative distinct from Turkish interests.
Left unchallenged, the PKK/PYD will become increasingly difficult to extricate
from Kurdish-populated territories, making it the only real power broker with
whom to negotiate among the disparate Kurdish groups.

The PYD/PKK’s
influence has been further encouraged by the Jihadist push into Aleppo, where
the PKK/PYD power base is strongest. Although the approximately 10,000 Kurdish
Alawites concentrated in the mountainous areas outside Aleppo are small in
number, they are influential in the region and back the PYD/PKK, alongside
fellow Syrian Alawites who are equally committed to a secular Syrian state. PYD
leader Dr. Bahouz Ardal is an Alawite and old school friend of Assad. Salih
Muslim, the PYD spokesman, also is an Alawite Kurd.

These deep-rooted
political, economic and cultural Alawite networks, alongside a weakened Syrian
state, have enabled the PYD/PKK to expand its territorial gains and regional
leverage. In addition to key border regions, the PYD-PKK now controls the Efrin
Mountain, which is only about five miles from the Turkish commercial town of
Gaziantep. This gives the group yet another base from which to launch its
cross-border operations against Turkey, alongside its headquarters in Qandil,
Iraqi Kurdistan.

There is one aspect to Kurdish politics that often gets ignored, but the
article by Denise Natali quoted above gets it right, namely: the role
confessional minorities play in shaping the Kurdish political order. In the
case of Syria, Kurdish Alawites, albeit few in number (10-15,000 in all), tend
to be fervent supporters of the PKK in Turkey and its affiliated PYD in Syria. As
such they are extremely secular, and maintain some rapport with Arab Alawites.

However, it is important to note here that, in academic terms, Kurdish
Alawites are actually Alevis, that is, their religious beliefs are closer to those
of Turkey’s Alevi population than to those of the Alawites of Syria (and the
Hatay Province in Turkey). In political terms, Turkish Alevi population is for the
most part left-leaning and tend to be more sympathetic to the Assad regime, as
part of their ongoing opposition to US policies in the region, and AKP domestic
programs. Kurdish Alevis in Syria have similar tendencies, and seem to be well-represented,
if not over-represented, in the higher ranks of PYD, but, on account of the
national issue involved, they have tried to maintain in a more neutral stand vis-à-vis
the Syrian Revolution, and to keep local Kurdish communities as neutral as
possible as well. The increasing Islamization of the revolutionaries and the
recent clashes in Ras Al-Ain pitting Islamist rebels against local Kurdish
protection units (YPGs), which are ideologically linked to the PKK, are helping
their case.

About the Author

Ammar Abdulhamid is a liberal Syrian pro-democracy activist whose anti-regime activities led to his exile in September of 2005. He currently lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife, Khawla Yusuf, and their children, Oula (b.1986) and Mouhanad (b. 1990). He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion. His personal website and entries from his older blogs can be accessed here.